A group led by Professor Nakanishi of Keio University has called in Ricoh Co to help with the production of a multi-user artificial intelligence applications development computer it has designed: called Synapse, it comes programmed in Lisp or nothing, and is built around three off-the-shelf but unidentified 16-bit microprocessors, one for inference processing, the other two for housekeeping – clearing up the dreadful mess Lisp leaves lying around in memory when it’s finished a pass; the clever trick is special circuitry that prevents the maids with their mops from getting in the way of the main CPU.
